


at summer's end

by forbiddenarchives



Series: summer's end verse [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Idiots in Love, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:48:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23375671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forbiddenarchives/pseuds/forbiddenarchives
Summary: There should be a list entitledThomas Hamilton’s Terrible Ideas, and at the very top, Thomas is certain, right after “trusting Lord Peter Ashe” and “blowing that stupidly beautiful older student in broad daylight on the last day of term”, it should say “taking up correspondence with feared pirate captain Long John Silver”.(Or, it takes seven weeks for Silver to become fully integrated into their lives. A small story told in snapshots.)
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver, Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton, Captain Flint | James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton/John Silver, Thomas Hamilton/John Silver
Series: summer's end verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747078
Comments: 34
Kudos: 204





	at summer's end

**Author's Note:**

  * For [olincino](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olincino/gifts).



> A huge thank you to olincino for sharing so much wonderful Toby content with us, and to lupismaris for being the loveliest beta-reader one could ask for.
> 
> Rated M for one brief instance of fornication that is not just alluded to.

0

There should be a list entitled _Thomas Hamilton’s Terrible Ideas_ , and at the very top, Thomas is certain, right after “trusting Lord Peter Ashe” and “blowing that stupidly beautiful older student in broad daylight on the last day of term”, it should say “taking up correspondence with feared pirate captain Long John Silver”. And then the next item on the list would be “arranging a clandestine meeting between feared pirate captain Long John Silver and one’s truest love”.

Somehow Thomas doesn’t feel terrible about it, though. It’s been eating James up, whatever unresolved issues there are between them — not that he talks about it. What little information Thomas has been able to pry out of him stands in stark contrast to all the things he doesn’t say. It’s the omissions that speak loudest of all.

(“Who was your quartermaster after Gates?” Thomas asked him once, because it seemed like something worth inquiring about, considering how warmly James spoke of the late Hal Gates.

“No one,” James said, daring him to contradict him, knowing full well that Thomas was aware that ships didn’t sail without a quartermaster.

Thomas decided to drop it, but he held on to the information that the role of quartermaster was important.)

They find a place to settle, and life moves on. They take up residence in a quiet little cottage on the edge of a town just large enough so that two widowers living together won’t draw undue attention, and far enough inland so that its mayor doesn’t pride himself on hanging pirates. No one needs to know that they’re mourning the same woman.

Life moves on, except for the shards of unknown emotional origin that James still holds onto tightly enough to make his hands bleed. After their first winter together, as spring draws to a close, Thomas has had enough. James needs his hands for work — he’s opened up a small carpentry workshop in the shed behind the house — and Thomas needs his heart to be unobstructed. Or, as unobstructed as it can be these days.

When they finally meet with Silver it’s on neutral ground, and Thomas is struck by how rigidly the pirate holds himself. His posture doesn’t waver as they enter, but there is a slight tremble in his voice when he speaks.

“You’ve grown your hair out,” Silver says to James, and when he stands, he seems too small to fit into all the gaps Thomas has mapped out, the constellations of things James won’t talk about.

He leaves them to it, and when he returns James’ eyes are rimmed red, but something is thawing.

There’s no immediate happily-ever-after: they talk more the next day, and Silver promises to come see them when he can. First, he has business to take care of.

It takes until the end of summer, but then, on a rare crisp and cloudless day, Silver turns up on their doorstep.

1

For the first week he’s with them, John Silver eats like a man possessed. The rest of the time he sleeps. At some point he changes out of his stained and dirtied pirate garb and into a simple cotton shirt and breeches, purloined from what must have been James’ corner of their shared closet.

James’ eyes widen when John turns up at the breakfast table in the russet-colored shirt that always used to clash a little with his hair.

(The shirt looked better on Thomas, but they stole it off a dead guard, and Thomas couldn’t help but remember where the blood stains barely washed out. Now it complements Silver’s skin tone in a disconcerting way.)

“No.” James holds perfect eye contact with his piece of bread.

Silver sits down at the table and beheads two hard-boiled eggs in quick succession.

“I’ll see about some garments in town today,” Thomas offers, because someone has to. “Mrs. Roberts is still seeking to get rid of her late husband’s things. Just until we find something more suitable.”

“Dead man’s clothes for a dead man,” Silver mumbles, but he smiles as he shoves more bread into his mouth.

(Silver faked his own death, of course, and contributed a moderately sized bag of loot and various weaponry to the household upon arrival.)

“You,” Thomas touches James’ shoulder, “should make sure he trims that beard. It’s far too piratical.” He looks over to Silver, shaking his head and mouthing, “Can’t let you leave the house like this.”

James just grunts, but then he never is the most verbal in the mornings.

Thomas kisses him goodbye and leaves, humming to himself most of the way to the schoolhouse, where he attempts to teach unwashed children the basics of Latin and arithmetic.

The situation may be tense now, but it will get better. Thomas is sure of it.

2

For the first week he’s with them, John Silver only sleeps and eats. Then he takes a bath, a proper one.

When Thomas comes home with a pile of clothes under one arm and some cuts for dinner under the other, he spots Silver rifling through the kitchen cupboards, searching for something to eat. His body is stretched out precariously as he balances on one foot, and Thomas promptly drops the meat.

It hits the floor with a wet splotch. It’s not ruined, thankfully, and Thomas picks it back up, casting quick glances at this person that now appears to live with them.

The man in front of him looks ten years younger than the one he knew this morning, and the grin on his clean-shaven face is positively filthy when he approaches Thomas.

“Here, let me help you with that.” Silver grabs the bundle of clothes instead of the meat, and Thomas feels oddly disappointed in a way he can’t really explain.

“Where’s James?” he asks, because he doesn’t quite trust himself to be alone with Silver at this precise moment.

“Kicked me out of his workshop.” Silver is already halfway down the hallway, affording Thomas a view of an arse so perfect, he doesn’t understand how he didn’t notice before.

“Probably too bloody distracting,” he mutters when Silver is out of earshot, and sets out to prepare dinner.

3

Roughly a week after the bath, as far as Thomas can tell, James and Silver start sleeping with each other, and Thomas is relieved.

Really, he is.

He’s never been the jealous type, never understood the purpose of trying to contain the person you loved, of not wanting the maximum amount of happiness for them. It just doesn’t make sense to him.

Thomas is relieved because there’s a tension that goes out of James like a breath held for months, years perhaps, and even though James and Silver make sure to indulge their affections only when he’s out of the house, something has definitely changed between them.

Not to mention the sudden spring in Silver’s step.

Thomas’ and James’ own lovemaking has changed, too, though not in any tangible way — if anything, James is more enthusiastic, making sure Thomas feels appreciated no matter what he gets up to during the day. And, really, that’s all that matters, Thomas thinks.

So Thomas is relieved, he really is, until he comes home early one night to find James on his knees in front of Silver in the living room, one hand on Silver’s dick and the other one working his own. One of Silver’s hands is in his hair, the other is gripping the crutch, and James doesn’t notice him right away, busy as he is with his mouth, but Silver does.

“Shit,” he says, and James pulls off and turns his head.

“Don’t… let me stop you, love,” Thomas says, pointedly making eye contact and ignoring the enticing sight in his peripheral vision, the appendage still rising from James’ hand. “I’ll… check in on the chickens. Perhaps one of you could fetch me when you’re done.” 

He turns on his heels and gets some distance between them and the growing tightness in his crotch. 

Thomas is relieved, until he _really_ isn’t.

4

They talk about it, of course. They talk about it, and they repair the bed that Silver and James somehow manage to break a few days later, and Thomas really doesn’t want to know how.

(That’s a lie. He does want to know. He wants to know every single detail.)

One thing they haven’t talked about is sleeping arrangements. It’s simply been understood that Silver stays in what used to be the guest room — Thomas supposes it’s Silver’s room now — while James and Thomas sleep in the master bedroom.

All goes well until one morning when Thomas turns towards James and reaches for his hand, only to find that James, in his sleep, has somehow grown a supernumerary arm. There’s the familiar two as James sleeps on his side, covered in strawberry blonde fuzz and an impossible amount of freckles, hands folded in front of his face. And then there’s another one with sparse dark hair and shockingly unfreckled skin, wrapping around James’ body from behind.

It’s the hand belonging to this arm that Thomas has been stroking. When he looks up over James’ sleeping form he meets a pair of clear blue eyes beneath a mess of dark curls.

“It got cold,” Silver says with a shrug. “I’m not used to it anymore.”

It’s true, the nights have gotten cooler. And Silver’s room is the one furthest away from the kitchen, where they’ve banked the fire for the night.

Thomas lies back and ponders this new development, in lieu of pondering the sleepy morning sex he is now not having.

5

“You do know I have to listen to you all the time,” Silver says out of the blue a few days later when he and Thomas are cutting up vegetables for dinner. James is busy in his workshop, putting the finishing touches to a larger project he’s been working on all week.

“Hmm?” Thomas has picked up a lot of skills over the past few years, but he still has to remain focused when handling a sharp knife so close to his fingers.

“When you fuck.” Silver makes the consonants of that last word pop. Thomas shoots him a glance while dropping the carrots into the pan.

“Does it bother you?”

“Not really.” If Silver is surprised at the fact that Thomas cares about his feelings, he disguises it quickly. “It doesn’t matter to me what the two of you do together,” he adds, a tad too chirpily.

“Hmm.” Thomas stirs the carrots. “You could always find work, I suppose.”

Silver snorts at that, and Thomas realizes —

He only meant so that they could be more considerate about sharing this home, about sharing James.

But then Silver grins and says, “If that’s what you want,” just as James comes in from outside. A few strands of hair have come loose from his tie, falling into his face, and his work shirt falls open around his chest, where he’s still sweaty from work.

“What does he want?” James asks, oblivious to the effect he has on them.

Thomas and Silver look at James and then back at each other, and they do wear him out a bit, that night, one after the other, and James sleeps in Silver’s bed for a change.

6

And so it is decided, to John Silver’s great chagrin, that he should find work.

Thomas walks into town with him in the morning, slowing his long stride to match Silver’s. The townspeople know them by now, and Silver changes into a different version of himself in their presence, enhancing some aspects of his personality and minimizing others.

The first time Thomas witnesses it, the transformation is chilling. It’s only afterwards that he begins to appreciate the skillfulness on display, the way Silver can be the person other people want him to be, slotting himself into a pre-existing gap in their lives. It’s a skill that he, Thomas, has always lacked completely.

Which also begs the question: How much of the Silver he encounters every day is put on? Is the Silver with him different from the one that’s with James?

Silver starts taking up the odd afternoon and evening shift at the local pub, only a few times a week, helping out at the bar and washing dishes when it’s quiet. What he’s really doing, Thomas realizes quickly, is collating gossip and leveraging it to their collective advantage, getting to know the inner workings of the town.

Sometimes Thomas drops by after work and watches him, watches his nimble, self-assured movements behind the bar and the way his laugh catches the light.

He enjoys the walk home through the autumn leaves on those evenings, pondering his life and the people in it, the air so clear and the trees on fire beside him, so that amongst all this splendor he almost doesn’t notice that Silver is the mystery he wants to unravel.

7

When they kiss, it still comes as a surprise.

They’re curled up in the living room one evening, Thomas in the arm chair, and James and Silver on the couch. The fire is crackling, and James is reading out loud from a book he’s found at the weekly market. It’s not the most thrilling piece of literature, but simply listening to James’ steady voice, safely ensconced in the warmth of their little cottage, is a pleasure.

It’s so relaxing that Thomas nods off for a little bit. When he wakes again James is still reading, so he can’t have been out for long, and Silver has stretched out on the couch, taking some of the pressure off of his leg and resting his head in James’ lap.

Between turning the pages, James cards his fingers through Silver’s hair, wrapping stray curls around his fingers and playing with them. Other times he will pet Silver gently, making him sigh. Thomas isn’t sure that he’s ever seen Silver so content, with his eyes lazily falling shut and a soft smile around his lips.

James only notices that he’s watching them after another page or two, stopping abruptly and clearing his throat. Silver blinks as if coming out of a haze, and James gets up carefully.

“I should make my round,” he announces. James’ nightly round is a habit no one has been able to break him of yet, and it’s usually also the signal that it’s time for them to head to their respective beds.

James presses a kiss to his temple, and then he is gone.

“Will you continue?” Silver says into the silence. He sounds younger than his years, holding out the book that James has left on the couch. “Just for a little bit.”

Thomas nods, and at Silver’s inviting smile, he sits down next to him.

Silver scrutinizes him as he opens the book and searches for the place where James has left off. It would have been a whole lot easier to find if he’d been listening to any of the words at all, and not just to the comforting rasp of his lover’s voice.

He’s still fumbling with the pages when there’s a hand at his chin, turning his face, and then Silver’s lips are on his, a warm breath ghosting across his cheek.

Thomas makes a small noise in surprise, his mouth opening under Silver’s. Then his hand is on the hinge of Silver’s jaw, pulling him closer, his heartbeat fluttering under his fingers. He kisses the side of Silver’s mouth and his cheek, sinking down to his neck to breathe him in. Silver’s breath comes faster, and he pulls Thomas into another kiss, licking into his mouth. The feel of Silver’s tongue against his is hot and sure, and it goes straight to Thomas’ cock. Has it been aching this whole time?

The book drops to the floor, neglected.

Before they become fully aware of what they’re doing, there’s a chuckle sounding from the door, followed by James’ amused voice.

“I thought you’d never figure it out.”


End file.
